Grinding heads, shredder heads, and the different mobile apparatuses used therewith for carrying out various sylvicultural applications, are well known in the art.
FIG. 1 shows a grinding head 101 commercialised under FECON™ BULLDOG BH-80. The grinding head 101 is typically mounted onto a corresponding apparatus and operated along a given direction of rotation 113, over a terrain to be treated, for carrying out grinding applications thereon. Indeed, this type of grinding head 101 is devised for preparing the terrain according to well known sylvicultural principles. Grinding hammers 125 are used for grinding vegetation and penetrating into the ground, and since the hammers 125 penetrate the ground, the vegetation above the ground is generally well processed (i.e. is well ground). This approach enables to avoid the premature wear or the breaking of cutting tools/knifes which would otherwise be used with shredder heads. However, the quality of processing (e.g. cutting) of the vegetation tends to be imperfect, stems tend to remain half-cut and the stumps often remain too long, which is undesirable because it goes against silvicultural principles, as is well known in the art.
Shredder heads are similar to grinding heads, except that they are used mainly for cutting and shredding applications, and thus the above-mentioned hammers are replaced by cutting tools or shredding knives, as can be easily understood.
FIG. 2 is a side view of a pair of adjacent shredding assemblies 111 of a shredder head commercialised under CIMAF™. The shredding assemblies are operated along a given direction of rotation 113 and each shredding assembly 111 including a shredding knife 117. A major drawback associated with this type of device is that during ground level operation, the shredding knives 117 frequently encounter rocks and/or other unwanted debris, and thus may break and/or wear out prematurely, which is very disadvantageous for obvious reasons known in the art.
FIGS. 3-5 show different views of a shredder head also commercialised under CIMAF™. As shown, the shredder head includes shredding knives 117 having a given radius of action. This type of shredder head is devised for carrying out the preparation of the terrain. The knives' main function is to grind, and even brush cut the vegetation. Each of the knives 117 is mounted onto a disk 127 having a radius of action 123 being at a height “h” smaller than a radius of action 121 of the knife 117, as better shown in FIG. 4. The disk 127 essentially fulfills two functions. On one end, the disk reinforces the support of the knife, by increasing the support surface of the support of the knife on the rotor. On another end, the disk 127 limits the material to be cut that the knife 117 meets at each rotation of the rotor, to the material found above the radius of action 123 of the disk 127. However, a major disadvantage that results with this type of device is that, when operating at ground level, the knives 117 frequently penetrate into the ground and meet rocks, which prematurely wears or even breaks the knives 117. The repairing an/or the replacement of the worn out or broken knives 117 increases the costs and slows down the work carried out with the apparatus, which is also very undesirable for obvious reasons known in the art.
Hence, in light of the aforementioned, there is a need for an improved shredder head which, by virtue of its design and components, would be able to overcome some of the above-discussed prior art problems.